Ruthless: A Dark College Romance (Somerset University Book 1)

by Ruby Vincent

  “His bedroom, I believe. He mentioned calling his wife and the girls.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I was walking off before I finished the sentence.

  Brian opened his door on the fifth knock. The phone was stuck to his ear.

  “Yeah, it’s Ezra, Mina. Want to say hi? Put the girls on too.” Brian shoved the phone on me.

  “Hi, Ezra,” said a warm voice. “How are you? Did you enjoy your Christmas?”

  I fixed on my brother as I spoke.

  “I did,” I replied. “It was perfect having my whole family here. Plus, eating Christmas dinner with my father. The only thing that would have made it better was if you and the girls were here.”

  Brian looked away.

  “I wish we could have been there too. We miss you both,” said Amina. “Girls, say hi to Uncle Ezra.”

  “Uncle Ezra! Uncle Ezra!”

  Excited shrieks and squeals rattled my eardrums. I stared at my brother the whole time.

  “I love you guys,” I said. “I’ll see you soon. Bye.”

  Brian reached out. “Wait—”

  I hung up.

  “Sorry. You can call back in a minute and tell them when you’ll be home.” I cocked my head. “When is that, by the way? You’ve been here for months.”

  He laughed. “You trying to get rid of me, little brother? Want Mom all to yourself again?”

  “I want to know why you haven’t gone back to your job or your family.”

  “I’m taking time off from work.” Brian went over to the bed. A pile of Christmas gifts sat on the comforter. He gave me his back as he removed tags and folded his new clothes. “I spent more time in the air than I did with my family. This is the longest I’ve been in Evergreen. The longest I’ve been with Mom and you. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I’m happy you’re here as long as it’s because you want to be with us,” I said, “and not because you’re hiding from the Sons of Slaughter.”

  He stilled.

  “Your four-month visit has nothing to do with your gambling debts, right? It’s not about you getting in too deep with a cartel?” My voice rose, feeding the power of the shots firing at his back. “It’s not because you fucked up and got yourself into serious danger!”

  The wool sweater slipped through his fingers and covered his feet. I barely recognized the faint, raspy croak that came from him as my brother’s voice. “How... did you f-find out?”

  “That’s what you have to say to me?” The veneer broke. The fury, pain, and fear I’d been holding back for weeks gushed forth in a torrent that dragged me under. “You want to know who told me and I want to know why it wasn’t you! Look at me!”

  I jumped on him. Gripping his shoulder, I spun him to face me and Brian’s feet tangled in the sweater.

  “Ezra!”

  We fell, collapsing at the foot of the bed. That didn’t stop me.

  “What the fuck happened, Brian?!” I climbed on top of him. “How much money do you owe?”

  “Ezra, get off!” He tried to buck me.

  I threw him down and pushed my forearm down on his neck. Not as hard as Aiden, but enough to get his attention.

  “You’re involved with a cartel?! How? Why?”

  “K-keep your voice down.”

  “Mom doesn’t know, does she?” Spittle flew from my mouth. “What are they going to do to you, Brian? What’s going to happen?”

  The first tear landed on his cheek and traveled down like one of his own. Eyes widening, he stopped struggling.

  “Noth-thing,” he forced out. “Nothing will happen.”

  He pried me off his neck and shoved me off. I fell on my back but scrabbled up to go after him again. He caught me and pinned me to his chest.

  “It’s all right, Ezra,” he whispered. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  I pounded his stomach, furious tears running down my face. He grunted under the assault, but didn’t try to stop me. “Why didn’t you tell me?! I had to find out you were in trouble from that piece of shit!”

  “I’ll tell you now. I promise. Just calm down.”

  It took him repeating that several times. The mist slowly cleared and the strength it gave me fled.

  Brian eased me against the footboard.

  “Damn.” He cringed as he clutched his stomach. “Don’t tell anyone you kicked my ass.”

  My mind was on one thing. “How did this happen?”

  He sighed. “Where do I start?”

  “The beginning would be nice.”

  “The beginning,” he repeated.

  Brian sat next to me. We looked out across the messy expanse of his room, broken and disheveled on the floor.

  “I’m a pilot,” he began. “People envision a glamourous life jet-setting around the world when I tell them my job. What it really is are long hours sitting on my ass, going to the same places over and over again, and spending little time in any of them. You do this long enough and you begin looking for quick, cheap thrills to fill the short hours of a layover.”

  “How did you fill your hours?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

  “For my buddies, it was booze and anonymous fucks. For me, it was poker.”

  “Does Amina know?”

  “She does now,” he replied. “For a long time, I didn’t believe I had a problem. I make a good salary. All the money I lost, I made back by the next paycheck. There was nothing to worry about.”

  “Until you sat down at a poker table with guys who call themselves the Sons of Slaughter,” I said. “How did that happen?”

  “It didn’t.” He sighed. “Or at least not as easily as you’re thinking. Roman and I had two days in New York, so we hit the tables.”

  “Roman?”

  “A friend and my copilot.”

  I nodded. “So what happened?”

  “The first night we hit our usual places. I won some and I lost some, but it wasn’t too bad,” he said. “The next night, Roman tells me about a game in Manhattan where they play for higher stakes. All legit and a chance to make some real money.”

  He gripped my arm. “You have to understand, Ezra. I didn’t slink through some back alley into a smoke-filled drug den and then sit down with guys that had their kills tatted on their face. The game was in a hotel. A nice one. They wore suits and drank three-hundred-dollar scotch. I threw my money down without hesitation. By the end of the night, I owed over two hundred grand.”

  My jaw slackened. “Two hundred?” I breathed.

  “It was a setup. Roman. The game. All of it. I realized it, and the men I was dealing with, way too late.”

  He scrubbed his face, and his exhaustion reflected as it did in his words.

  “I asked for time to get the money. They gave me two weeks with an extra grand every day they had to wait,” he said. “I was shitting myself, Ezra. There was no way I could get my hands on that kind of money in two weeks. I missed the deadline and the next day three guys came to my hotel room and beat the shit out of me. They pulled a gun and that’s when Roman came in.”

  I couldn’t speak for the tight band around my neck. My imagination took me to the darkest places as I waited to know the truth. This was worse.

  “Roman pleaded with them. Asked for another way to pay off the debt.”

  My mind made the connections all too quick. “They’d let you pay it off by running product over the border.”

  He nodded. “Private pilots skirt the security checks. I was exactly what they needed and Roman offered me up without a thought.”

  “He’s one of them?”

  “No,” he said. “Not by choice. Like me, he owed them money and he saved himself a bullet in the head by trafficking their coke.”

  Sighing, I dropped my head back against the board. “He’s the one who called that day, screaming about flying stuff out.”

  “Yeah, that’s him. I agreed to everything they wanted to get out of that room, but as soon as I got home, I packed up the girls, sent them to
Amina’s parents, and came here.”

  I waited for him to say more. He didn’t.

  “Came here to do what?” I pushed. “It’s been four months. Have you told Mom? Are you going to tell Mom?”

  Brian raised his head; his eyes were hard. “No and no.”

  “Why not? She’d give you the money in a heartbeat and—” A thought broke in. “How have you gone this long without them catching up to you? Wouldn’t your mother’s home be the first place Roman would send them to?”

  “He would... if he knew Amelia Lennox was my mother.”

  My face crumpled in confusion. “I thought you said he was a friend? How could he not know who your mother is? Why doesn’t he know?”

  “Ezra, don’t.”

  “Do you keep her a secret?” I shoved him. “Do you keep us a fucking secret?”

  “Yes! And it’s a good thing I did, or I’d be dead!” He seized my wrist, stopping another punch. “You may like random shits stalking you and pretending to like you to get close to your rich, famous mom, but I don’t. I’m Brian Spencer and my mom is a local journalist. The end.”

  I ripped out of his hold. “Is that why you won’t go to her for help? Your stupid fucking mommy complex!”

  His lips twisted. “Of course not,” he snarled. “I didn’t go to her to protect her! Now will you stop interrupting!”

  The reply was a dagger to my rage. “Protect her?”

  “You know Mom. She’s not going to pass an envelope containing three hundred grand across the dining table and go back to eating her crepes. I’d have to tell her everything and she’d go after them. She’d turn the spotlight and a hundred cameras on their operation, putting both of you in danger.

  “Despite their name, they’re not some unwashed street thugs working out of a seedy apartment. They’re smart and organized. The cartel leaders live in houses as big as this and can afford to pay out thousand-dollar suites to lure dumbass pilots like me into their game.”

  He grabbed my shoulders. “I’m not a good son.” His fingers dug painfully into me. “I’m an even worse older brother, but credit me with loving you two enough that I wouldn’t drag you into this mess.”

  I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. He was right. Mom wouldn’t give him the money without an explanation, and once she had it, she’d go after the Sons of Slaughter with the full force of her empire, adding fiercer enemies to the growing list.

  “I will end this,” he said. “Amina is borrowing money from her parents. She’s selling our things and then finally the house. It’ll take time, but once I have the money, I’ll clear my debt. I’ve lost my job, so I’m not much use to the cartel anyway.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Selling everything you own and living off your in-laws isn’t a plan, Brian. You have children. And what about Amina’s job? How long can she be away from the firm before you’re both out of work?”

  The hard set of his chin endured. “It’ll be tough, but we’ll survive. We have her family and mine. The girls will be okay.”

  “You do have family.” I grabbed him in kind. “You have me. Let me help you. I have about fifty thousand in my account right now, and I can get more. Not right away, but still faster than you’ll pull the money together.”

  “No.”

  “But, Bri—”

  “No.” His grip tightened. “Ezra, you’re having nothing to do with this. You never should have found out.” Brian’s eyes narrowed. “How did you? Did you break into my phone?”

  “Your stuff was broken into,” I said, “but it wasn’t by me. The oh-so-innocent guy everyone told me to back off of, dug up information on all the pledges and their families. Aiden Connelly knows everything and he threatened to tell the Sons of Slaughter where you are if I don’t back off.”

  “Holy shit.” Brian rocked back. “He wouldn’t really do that, would he?”

  The look I gave him held the answer. “Deep down, there’s something not right about that guy. I can feel it.”

  “I’m sorry, Ezra. Hit me if I ever doubt your instincts again.”

  “You see? I’m already involved, Brian. Let me help.”

  He shook his head. “I have a plan and I’m taking care of it. Just give me some more time. I’ll pay them back and then you’ll handle this Aiden bitch. I’ll even help.”

  “Brian—”

  “Don’t say it. I will not take money from you.” He got to his feet and reached out to help me up. “Promise me that you will stay out of it. Promise.”

  Anger held my tongue. I wanted to rage and scream at the stubbornness carved on his face.

  But none of it will do you any good if he won’t take the money. There’s only one thing to say.

  “I promise.”

  VALENTINA

  “I wish the boys were here to help us.”

  Sofia zipped her suitcase and hauled it up. “We’re two strong, capable women,” she said. “We can move me into the Sally house on our own.”

  “We can,” I mumbled, “but I don’t want to.”

  “I heard that.”

  The end of winter vacation came all too quickly. The second semester of our first year of college began the next day, which gave us eighteen hours to pack up Sofia’s life and unpack it across campus.

  “I’m surprised you decided to live in the Sally house after everything,” I said. “I can’t believe you all did. Palmer looked ready to kill Leighton after our little initiation ceremony.”

  Sofia crossed the room and began taking down her plates. “The Zeta Rho Sigma rooms are nicer, cheaper, and bigger than what I’m living in now. Also, worse secrets were revealed in that room than mine. I’m not angry at Leighton anymore, but I will be if you are.”

  She looked at me. “I’m serious. There are things you don’t do and making you speak about your rape is number one through ten on the list. I don’t give her a pass for it, and if you’re upset, so am I.”

  “I’m not, trust me.” The real sentence on that card floated through my mind. “It could have been a lot worse. Leighton let me off easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shut up, dumbass. I can’t talk about this—not even with Sofia.

  “I mean she didn’t make me name names,” I said.

  Sofia released a shuddering breath. “That would have been horrible. She didn’t make any of us name names. I hope she’s right and we can all go on like that night never happened.”

  “Do you think we can? I haven’t heard from Palmer, Mai, or Keily and I texted them all over the break.”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  A half an hour later, Palmer mumbled a hello at us on her way out of the door.

  “Do you need help bringing your stuff in?” I called after her.

  She pretended not to hear.

  “That’s a no to going on like it never happened,” I said to Sofia.

  Sofia transferred her box to the other hand and fished out her new key. “Give her a minute,” she said. “We’re bound to be weird around each other for a while, but we’re still friends.”

  “Sofia. Val.” Patricia burst out of the kitchen. “You’re finally here. We’re so pumped to start a new semester with our new”—she hooked her arms around us—“sisters.”

  Sofia and I shared a look over her head. Apparently, some of us were not feeling awkward.

  “You don’t have to lug Sofia’s stuff just the two of you,” she said. “Reagan and I will help.”

  “Thanks,” said Sofia. “We’ll grab you after we unpack these boxes.”

  Sofia’s room was everything she said. Nicer, bigger, and cheaper. Alumni donations got the Sallys queen-sized beds, flat screens, throw rugs, and a couch I flung myself on.

  “This place is going to be gorgeous when you’re done with it,” I told her. “You can put your photos on that wall and weave lights through the drapes.”

  “Oooh. Good idea.”

  “Hey, guys.”

  Keily stood in Sofia’s en
trance. The time off looked good on her. Keily’s auburn waves sported a fresh cut and a new gold necklace nestled on her chest.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s good to see you. How was break?”

  “It was fun. Snow, Christmas movies, and messing around with my little brothers. It doesn’t get much better than that. And... uh...” She shifted from foot to foot. “I wanted you to know I broke up with Wesley and Giovanni.”

  “Okay,” I said softly. “If that’s what you wanted.”

  Her throat bobbed against her new necklace. “It was the right decision. Are we okay?”

  “Of course we are,” Sofia said.

  The first smile appeared on her lips. “Okay, good. See you downstairs.”

  “Downstairs?”

  She pointed over her shoulder. “Leighton wants us all in the dining room. She needs to talk to us about something.”

  That works out because I need to talk to her too.

  We followed Keily downstairs.

  Leighton stood at attention at the front of the dining room.

  At attention. It’s interesting that’s the first phrase to come to mind, but it fits her perfectly. She’s like a tiny little general.

  “Take a seat, ladies,” she said. “Get comfortable.”

  I snagged the chair next to Blair. She nodded at me but didn’t say anything.

  “We’re going to be busy this week with new classes and schedules, so now is a good time to go over details for this semester,” Leighton began. “First, we’ve almost got enough for the Sams, but some of you said you’d like to keep fundraising for a spring break trip of our own. Show of hands if you want to as well?”

  Everyone raised their hands.

  “Great,” she said. “If that’s the case, we should stick with the bake stand. It’s turning a great profit, and with more sisters in the house, we’ve got a lot of hands to help with the baking. Our schedules are different this semester, so we’ll work up another timeslot sheet today and get it back up and running by tomorrow.”

  “I can do the night shift again,” Sofia said quickly. “Eight to ten. I want that slot.”

  “I don’t think anyone is going to fight you. Eight to ten is yours. As for house rules, you should know them since you’ve got the Sally handbook memorized, but just in case, we don’t...”